stephanie is back at monday at 9:00 a.m. eastern. >> i don't know how you do it my friend. hello, i'm chris jansing, it's 11:00 a.m. out west, 2:00 p.m. in washington. where in light of mounting evidence, there are serious allegations out there that the trump administration may be trying to rig the u.s. census. how? by adding a citizenship test, purely as a tool to gain partisanship advantage. they are mandated by the constitution every ten years andand what's at stake is enormous. that is how we draw legislative districts, how we allocate federal funds and how we decide where to build new schools. so why exactly does the trump administration want to add a citizenship question to the census, well, officially, the justification from the white house is that it's to make the survey more accurate. but a new court filing from the aclu argues that the real justification is naked

partisanship. newly discovered files from a deceased republican operative indicate the real purpose of the question is to gerrymander districts. he found that adding the question, quote, would be advantageous to republicans and nonhispanic whites. he then petitioned the trump administration to adopt the plan and while the department of justice is dismissing any involvement with him or his plan, that is directly contradicted by "the new york times" report that a portion of a document found on hard drives quote later appeared word for word in a draft letter from the justice department to the census bureau that sought a citizenship question on the 2020 census, so our big question of the day is the trump administration trying to change the census for partisan advantage? joining me now, nbc news justice correspondent pete williams, mother jones senior reporter ari

berman, and "washington post" dan ball. i'm going to read what you wrote, a citizenship question is expected to deter many immigrants and latinos from responding to the census. that, especially if combined with an effort to exclude non noncitizens from being counted in redistricting would result in a huge transfer of economic and political power to whiter and more republican areas. what's at stake here? >> it's a huge battle for democracy, chris. we already had major concerns that this question would deter responses from latino and immigrant groups that are afraid of the trump administration's immigration policies and don't want to give their citizenship information because they're afraid it could be used to deport them or their family. that fear has been out there for a while since the question was proposed. now we know based on the documents from tom hofetter, it

would be used to add, which would help republicans particularly white republicans and harm democrats. so this is really a smoking gun showing that the purpose of this question was to benefit republicans politically, essentially what they're trying to do is gerrymander the census to make more future gerrymandering efforts easier. >> this isn't the only example in which he tried to affect the maps, right? >> this is not the only example of tom doing this. this is a guy who for decades went around drawing redistricting maps that would benefit their party. some were so extreme, there was a plan out of north carolina that was struck down by the supreme court, and clarence thomas of all people said it went too far. you had conservative justices on the supreme court say the work of tom is too extreme. the fact that he's behind the citizen ship question is alarming. we don't want the gerrymandering

guy having a hand in the census. he's saying not only are we going to try to add this question, we know explicitly we're doing it to benefit republicans. there's no doubt about the purpose of the question now. >> the doj sees it differently, and i want to read the response they gave to the "new york times." these eleventh hour allegations including an accusation of dishonesty against a senior department of justice official are false. that study played no role in the department's 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020 centennial census. these unfounded allegations are an unfortunate last ditch effort to derail the supreme court's conclusion of the -- consideration of the case. is the doj clearly arguing they knew nothing about hoffler, knew nothing about the arguments. >> a couple of things to be clear, "the new york times" reporting is based on the aclu's court filing on thursday, and

that's where the allegation comes from. i don't believe "the new york times" is making an independent claim about it. they're reporting what the aclu says. and the justice department isn't saying that it was completely unaware of this. what it is saying is that it played no role in the letter that was sent from the justice department to congress saying we need this data in order to better administer the voting rights act. that's been the claim. now, the trick here is what happens now. in january, there was a trial in new york about this, 18 states and some other groups said to the judge you've got to block the government from doing this. their claims are a pretext. this was sort of politically motivated. they didn't go into all of these detail, because they weren't aware of this at the time, and the judge said to the census bureau, you can't include this question. that's the decision that's now before the supreme court. here's the trick, though. that case was argued in april,

and in essence, it's submitted now, and the supreme court basically makes decisions based on the court record. what happened in the trial court, what happened in the court of appeals, and how do you get this new everyday in. would it make any difference is a difficult question. there's no set procedure for doing this. the aclu sent the supreme court yesterday a copy of its filing in the trial court because they've asked the trial judge to look at whether government witnesses gave misleading testimony, and there's a hearing on that next wednesday. but whether any of this will make a difference to the supreme court, that's a tough one. clearly the justices are going to be aware of this. what role will it play, it's a tough -- who knows. >> obviously we're dealing probably with a different court. you say there is no set sort of way that this is done, but i assume that these kinds of filings that have come in late have happened before. >> what they typically come in is when new facts come to light and the parties say, okay, our

case is now moot. things have changedme. there's no need for you to decide this case. that happens not often but every now and then. when there's flat new evidence, there's no procedure. you have to try to get before the supreme court and stand out and wave it at them. there's no formal way to get it into the record. >> we have seen dan balls, the president who has tweeted about these kind of things repeatedly and about the census in particular, and i guess there's a larger question here, i mean, does this just become part of his bigger framing that democrats have this policy, continue to push policies that are making us less safe? >> well, chris, i don't know if that's the basic argument. you know, i think one of the issues in this case is will have to do with the integrity of the cens

census itself and the degree to which it is seen as a non-partisan exercise, which it has been seen as that way forever since the beginning of the country. so that's one aspect that all of this raises. i think that the new information from, you know, from tom's hard drive, and frankly he was one of the smartest people in the republican party about redistricting over many many years. and he had admirers and detractors and democrats respected him as a real adversary in this battle. i think that from him, we now see that there is clearly a political overtone to the value of adding the citizenship question. as pete says, it's not clear whether this will have any impact on consideration of the supreme court, but it will, depending on how the court rules, it will have an impact on how that ruling is interpreted.

>> in your opinion, and i want to go back to what ari said at the beginning about how important ultimately this ruling is going to be, would you agree that we're looking at something of maximum potential importance when you consider all the things that are affected by the census? >> oh, absolutely. i mean, if you fundamentally change the way we count the population in the country, you are changing all kinds of formulas. you know, not least being how you allocate congressional districts. and it's clear that if you change those numbers as mr. hefler's document showed, it will benefit, as he put it, nonhispanic whites and it will harm democrats in terms of the shaping of those districts. and so that's -- but that's only part of it as you suggested at the top. there are all kinds of other formulas, that affect the distribution of federal funds.

it's harder to know exactly how those would turn out, whether it would, in all cases, benefit white areas versus non-white areas, but it probably would but some of that has to do with the way states allocate as opposed to just how the federal allocate. but it would be a very very significant change. >> dan balz, pete williams, ari berman, thanks to all of you. we have breaking news out of missouri, we have gotten word on a judge's decision on the status of the state's remaining planned parenthood clinic. joining me now by phone is nbc news correspondent anne thompson, politico reporter, laura lopez is joining us as well. what can you tell us about this breaking news, what did the judge say? >> reporter: well, judge michael francis stelzer has issued the temporary restraining order which will keep the planned parenthood clinic open past the expiration. its license was expected or was

supposed to expire tonight at midnight. the judge now says that license shall not expire and remain in effect until a ruling on their request for preliminary injunction and that hearing will take place on june 4th. but the bottom line here, chris, is that missouri's only abortion clinic will continue to operate beyond may 31st. it will stay in business until they can have this hearing on what planned parenthood says basically amounts to harassment by the state of missouri in trying to get its license renewed. they claim that the state essentially keeps moving the goal post because they wanted to interview these three doctors who performed abortion services at the clinic. but they wouldn't guarantee that these doctors wouldn't face criminal penalties and so the doctors wouldn't talk to them. they feel that what this license renewal process has been

affected by the politics of abortion in missouri, and you'll remember that just last week, the governor signed into law a heart beat bill which prohibits abortions in missouri after eight weeks. and so this is a victory for planned parenthood, but it is a temporary victory. again, the clinic will stay open. it will stay open at least until june 4th, and that's when there will be another hearing on this issue in federal court. chris. >> that is the big headline, anne thompson, that we have been waiting for the court ruling. we got that court ruling so temporarily as anne just reported. at least missouri will not become the first state in the nation to have no abortion providers since roe v. wade. let me go to you, laura, and help us put this in a bigger picture. this is, whatever happens here, part of a wave of states that have been trying to advance limits on abortions. missouri just one of nine states

that enacted abortion restrictions this year alone, so where is this political fight going? >> right. well, the whole effort by these groups that are anti-abortion rights groups, they want this to head to the supreme court. it's designed to trigger the supreme court to revisit roe v. wade because these states are anti that law, and so that's where this is headed. >> and you have other considerations here in the meantime. i mean, the governor of missouri did not seem concerned. in fact, he was making the argument that the courts should not intervene until the state actually had a ruling on whether or not to take action on the license renewal. but when you look at places like georgia that depend on a lot of income from filmings there, tapings there, warner media, netflix, others who have already said that they either will pull

out or reconsider whether or not they're going to do tv shows and movies in that state, you can see that there is some outside pressure being bright to bear in co some of these states, folks that can't affect the politics but can make their voices heard. >> in addition to companies like disney, there's abortion rights groups that are holding days of action across those states and across the country, trying to pressure the republicans in those states to back down. there's a number of legal challenges going on in addition to missouri's, and you know, this just brings to bear the larger debate happening nationally, originally house republicans wanted to make 2020 about abortion. they were hoping they could corner democrats specifically on bills that were passed in states like new york. they were even going so far as to falsely claim that democrats support infanticide, which isn't true. it is illegal. they were hoping to make that a big issue in 2020. they have been caught flat

flooted wifloo footed with this slew of bills that are restrictive in terms of abortion rights. i reached out to republican offices and one gave a straight answer about whether they supported bills passed in alabama, which would provide no exception for rape or incest. >> it is a story we are going to continue to cover. anne thompson, thanks to you. laura berron lopez, thanks as well. we're going to continue to cover this again. the big breaking news, the headline that a judge has at least temporarily stopped legislation or has decided whether to wait -- whether or not for missouri to be able to essentially sign legislation that would close and make it the first state in the union that does not have any access to

abortion for any women in that state. dr. john torrez is there for us and will have more reaction coming up. still to come this hour, to impeach or not to impeach. that is the question i'm going to pose to democratic congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz. and speaking of the i word, could launching proceedings in the house be the best and only way to get americans to see and understand the mueller report? but first, the president unleashing new tariffs on mexico in an effort to stem illegal immigration, but could it backfire and actually make the humanitarian crisis worse? humanitarian crisis worse? ith. not this john smith. or this john smith. or any of the other hundreds of john smiths that are humana medicare advantage members. no, it's this john smith. who we paired with a humana team member to help address his own specific health needs. at humana, we take a personal approach to your health, to provide care that's just as unique as you are. no matter what your name is. ♪

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let's go back to that breaking news out of missouri where a judge has just issued a stay that will allow the state's last remaining abortion clinic to remain open. at least temporarily. joining us now from st. louis is dr. john torrez, he's been on the ground there, and has been gathering reaction outside the clinic. what are you hearing there, dr. john? >> reporter: i'm hearing reaction from both sides, cheering on both sides when they got the word that the temporary restraining order was granted. what that means for the clinic behind me, the planned parenthood clinic, the last remaining clinic in missouri, allowed to stay open and provide abortion services through tuesday at 9:00 a.m. when they have a second hearing. the judge said immediate harm and injury will result if the petitioner's license is allowed to expire. he's not allowing that to expire at this point.

they'll have a rehearing on tuesday at 9:00 a.m. to determine where to go from there. this fight is not over and that's what we heard from planned parenthood yesterday but as of today, service as usual. >> and some cheering there outside there. thank you so much dr. john torres. meanwhile, the stock market is clearly rattled at this hour. at the end of an already brutal month. this time, touched off by president trump's tweet announcing new tariffs on mexico. the dow now down over 300 points after the president wrote that tariffs will be imposed until illegal migrants coming through mexico and into our country stop. the white house says the tariffs will start at 5% on june 10th and increase by 5% each month reaching 25% in october. joining me now, nbc news correspondent julia aimsley who covers the dhj, and nick mirof. the u.s. imported i think 346 1/2 billion dollars worth of goods from mexico just last year.

and look, the markets had already freaked out in recent months following previous tariffs so what's the concern now and who's going to get hurt by this? >> well, we need to keep in mind that mexican imports go far beyond things like avocados and beer. we're talking about cars, airline parts, appliances, so many of the large consumer goods that americans purchase. this all adds up to a billion dollars a day, so these tariffs would have a far reaching impact on u.s. consumers. >> so u.s. consumers because theoretically, wouldn't this be to stop people from coming across the border? that's what the president, julia, seems to be indicating, if the idea is, then, to stop folks from coming across the border, how likely is it that this is going to do that? >> well, the border officials that i have spoken to are on the ground today say they don't expect a change based on these tariffs. what they are looking at is an

influx of massive overcrowding and customs and border protection facilities and lots of families and children who are coming here to claim asylum. that is completely separate from legal commerce that goes on across the border. if you think about it, every administration has struggled with how you decrease illegal activity, whether that be illegal immigration or drug trafficking across the border while allowing legal commerce to continue. you have to have a surgical precision for how you go after that. this policy seems to go after the exact opposite. it focuses on legal commerce, and as nick points out, legal commerce is a very dependent part of the economy here in the united states, so it's not clear the connection here, what the president wants to do is pressure mexico, and this isn't the first time he's done that. of course he had his famous campaign promise to have them pay for the wall. that hasn't panned out, and then he started a policy where he wanted mexico to hold immigrants while they waited for they asylum claims to be adjudicated.

that has been on hold in federal court, so this is another way to put pressure on mexico, but it's not clear that economic pressure is what would actually drive them to some kind of negotiating table, especially when they are already so strapped in how to care for the immigrants that are coming to their northern border, trying to get into the united states. >> there was a call on this last night, nick, an acting white house chief of staff mick mulvaney said the tariffs would not impact the u.s. mca, which of course is the trade agreement with mexico and canada. he said the two are absolutely not linked. keep in mind, this is an action that we take that is related to an immigration matter that is separate and apart from the u.s. mca, which is a trade matter. these are not tariffs as part of a trade dispute. these are tariffs as part of an immigration problem. but then, and you talk about this in your article, a strong statement from the senate finance committee chair, chuck grassley saying this is a misuse of presidential tariff authority and counter to congressional intent following through on this

threat would seriously jeopardize passage of u.s. mca, a central campaign pledge of president trump and what would be a big victory for the country. what's the feeling out there, nick? could this kill the u.s. mca? >> oh, i certainly think it runs counter to the spirit of it. let's keep in mind, the u.s. mca is designed to replace nafta, and one of the foundational purposes of nafta was to create jobs in mexico in order to manage the, what at that time was a growing immigration problem, and so, you know, a lot of the goods that would be taxed and a lot of the u.s. companies that are rattled right now, these are american fortune 500 companies that have manufacturing and assembly plants in mexico. they have created millions of jobs in mexico and that's one of the reasons we've seen illegal migration from mexico fall by more than 90% over the last

generation, and so, you know, one of the big risks here is that if you do something to tank the mexican economy, like tariffs of this magnitude, you could have a compounding migration problem that would involve not only central american families but, you know, renewed migration pressure from mexico. >> yeah, and i mean, again, julia, what exactly is it that the administration, when you look at that scale of tariffs going up and up and up, what is it that the administration wants mexico to do. the president said it has to stop. other members of the administration have been a little more like we just have to see some, i think, major action. what exactly is it that this administration is looking for to stop these tariffs from being imposed? >> you know, they didn't lay it out very clearly. it wasn't encapsulated in the tweets but i think what they want is for mexico to come to some sort of bargain where they

stop immigrant are coming through their countries, guatemala, honduras, and el salvador, and they're passing through mexico, and the united states wants mexico to do more to keep those people from coming to the united states. we know they have floated policies to try to make mexico a safe third party country where you could claim asylum there, rather than come to the united states. we have wanted more agreements and they have gotten from them, in order to keep immigrants there. mexico already has some tough deportation policies, tougher than ours. if you are a child, unaccompanied, coming through mexico, and the mexican authorities know that, they will quickly deport you back to your home country. that's not something that we have here in our laws. it's not clear exactly what they want and so it's hard to really pull the negotiation apart without having something in the other hand. >> julia ainsley, nick thank you, we appreciate it. attorney general william barr is punching back after

robert mueller appeared to publicly rebuke his response to the russia probe and in a brand new interview, he said he's not worried about critics or his legacies, saying quote, everyone dies and arguing that much of the judgment both of him and the president comes because of the political climate we're in. >> i think one of the ironies today is that people are saying that it's president trump that's shredding our institutions. i really see no evidence of that, and from my perspective, the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him, and you know, really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that's where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring. >> barr has not been shy about commenting on the mueller report, of course, shaping messaging about what it said, exactly what mueller found as he

saw it, even before the report was released. as one of my next guests write in the "new york times," the former special counsel strategy is proving to be a poor fit for our political moment. joining me now is katie banner who covers the justice department for the "new york times" and former attorney in michigan, barbara mcquaid, a professor of law at university of michigan and an msnbc contributor. katie, you wrote mr. mueller seemed to expect that the system would work as it had in the past with congress or perhaps voters making the decision about whether mr. trump had committed a crime only to see the president's hand picked attorney general and mr. mueller's long time friend make his own determination that there was not enough evidence to support such a charge, so i mean, was robert mueller naive? did he understand the risk by not making a judgment, katie, on obstruction? did he think he was being clearer than obviously some members of congress thought he

was? what happened here? >> well, i don't think that robert mueller would be the first attorney to think he was being crystal clear when for the rest of us it was a huge mound of legalese. that's not particularly unusual but i do think the times have changed around him. it's been a while since he served in government, and echoing something that bill barr said today, the political climate is much different, so if your expectation is that, you know, congress is going to read a 400-plus page report, you hib thinking about -- might be thinking about a different era, the starr report, when the public was reading it. lots of congressmen haven't read the report, and a lot of the public has no idea what is going on inside those pages. it was incumbent to take to the podium and reiterate the most important things in the document because it was clearly getting lost in all of the spin. >> i want to read a little bit more of what you wrote, katie. mueller worked in secret, allowing the president to fill

the void with reckless accusations of a witch hunt. his damming conclusions were encased in dense legal jargon that the president distorted into a vindication. barbara, could mueller have done this differently, could he have written it differently, could he have made it clear other than making a decision about whether or not there was obstruction? >> yes, i think he could have. i do think robert mueller saw himself as doing his job and not worrying too much about what other people would do regarding their jury box, what will -- their jobs, what william barr would do, and congress would do. living in this sound bite world, the idea of putting all of your information in a 448 page report and expecting people to read that may have been unrealistic. i think robert mueller was a little bit naive. he prepared those summaries you may recall, which were about 8 pages each for volume one and volume two, and i think it was his intent those be the first things that people read while the redaction process went on.

instead we saw william barr come out with his own lettering, top lining what mueller found instead of those smaers summaries -- summaries and i think it allowed william barr to change the narrative that robert mueller intended. >> the question now is that narrative baked in? you know, can the democrats somehow change the messaging, can they be clearer about what they believe the mueller report said and in fact, what it actually does say, have people tuned out at this point? >> i don't know, but i think that that was part of what robert mueller was trying to do the other day when he had his press conference. i think he realizes that the message of his report has not sunk in, and that he needed to get out there before the cameras, and explain his decision, and so he did so in a very shear way -- summary way. but i think he made it clear he thought he could not charge the president with a crime and there is a mechanism for holding presidents accountable. he didn't use the word by the

word is impeachment. >> you do wonder, was this all about somebody making a decision to move forward and he's a by the book kind of guy, for a book that has essentially been blown up by this presidency. >> yes, of course, let's just dwell on that for a moment. we have heard the attorney general say this morning that he doesn't think the president has done anything to degrade the norms of our democracy. i think that we could name off the top of the head several, undermining the fbi, attacking law enforcement et cetera, but yes, to your point, we're now in this position where, you know, what happens next, is congress going to actually take this. did robert mueller want him to? clearly if you're going by the book, he says and the legal opinion that he rely on from the justice department a sitting president can be held to account but it must be a political

process. impeachment or the general election. >> katie benner, barbara mcquaid, thanks to both of you. much appreciated. have a good weekend. and congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz is going to be talking about exactly this. are the democrats messaging and is she closer to impeachment. what would push her over the edge. we'll talk about it next. aboutt ...when a plan stops being a plan and gets set into motion. today's merrill can help you get there with the people, tools, and personalized advice to help turn your ambitions into action. what would you like the power to do? their medicare options...e people go to learn about before they're on medicare. come on in. you're turning 65 soon? yep. and you're retiring at 67?

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the calling to impeach president trump are growing louder following robert muellers

surprising statement this week. by our account here at nbc news, 52 house democrats and one house republican have now said they support at least opening an impeachment inquiry. blue the majority of the democratic caucus is standing firmly behind house speaker nancy pelosi who continues to insist that impeachment is exactly what the president wants. let me bring in former dnc chair and fol congresswoman, debbie wasserman schultz, good to see you, thanking for joining us. >> you too. thanks. i don't know if you read the op-ed but your former colleague, donna edwards in the "washington post" argues that you the democrats are losing the messaging war and i'm going to quote from that op-ed. it's time for democratic leaders to repackage mueller's findings in a form that will be more readily digested by the american people. unfortunately the current approach of investigations in no fewer than six committees, multiple subpoenas, innumerable court proceedings and white

house delay tactics just creates more confusion. how can the united states focus on the findings if the house will not singularly focus its investigations. are you losing this? i mean, are democrats doing enough to make their case? >> well, i have tremendous respect for my really dear friend donna edwards and i did not read her op-ed today, but quite frankly, we're not going to allow an authoritarian president like donald trump the authority to treat the constitution like one of his shady real estate contracts that he can just ignore or tear up, and so holding him accountable and making sure that we use all the tools available to us as a coequal branch of government is exactly what we are doing. now, i think what president trump and his cronies have continued to do, including the attorney general who holds his skirts every day, william barr,

is essentially obstruct justice by trying to deny us access to information and testimony that we rightfully and constitutionally should have access to and we're going to continue to press for that. >> if he is doing that, if he is constitutionally not doing his job, if he is blocking congress from doing its job, is it your job, then, to pursue impeachment? >> well, i think it's our job to follow our role in article one of the constitution and that is to function with the oversight responsibilities that we have and make sure that we first use all the tools that we have at our disposal. which we are proceeding under chairman nadler, under chairman cummings, under other chairs of committees and speaker pelosi, we're proceeding to do that. you don't go to def con 5 right when you think there has been a violation that has occurred, you make sure, particularly because with impeachment, you need the support of the american people,

and we need really bipartisan support. and so this is a sequential process that we need to go through. i'm confident in the process that we're moving forward on, and quite frankly, congresswoman edwards' op-ed leaves out one important point and that is that we don't have the full unredacted report available to us, so we have not seen all the evidence that robert mueller has and robert mueller should come before the judiciary committee and other committees and testify. >> and evidence in what you know now, the folks who are your colleagues, house democrats who believe, already we have enough evidence. it's clear to us that obstruction occurred and in fact, we saw that robert mueller laid it out, point by point by point, do you disagree with them? >> i think there are most definitely violations and that robert mueller in his report, especially at the podium the other day, clearly indicated that if he thought there was not a crime committed he would have said so which is the reverse of

saying he thinks there likely were crimes committed. the more that the administration continues to obstruct and essentially they're obstructing justice by i think not providing us with the information that we need to be able to conduct oversight, the closer we do get to impeachment. >> you indicated to one of your local papers the south florida sun sentinel that you are at least making some moves. they quote you as saying, i am at a point where i am maybe probably a little bit further toward an inquiry than i was before, and we're talking about three different silos, right, people who believe we're nowhere near impeachment, the people who think we should be moving forward to impeachment, and others who would support an inquiry. what's moving you and what would move you toward impeachment, clear impeachment? >> the obstruction is, and the inability so far of us to get the full cooperation of the administration and for them to function constitutionally. so if chairman nadler, our

chairman of the judiciary committee, chairman cummings, my chairman on oversight, if our chairmen can't get the people they need to testify to answer questions, if we can't get to the bottom of how russia interfered with our elections and make sure that the administration is paying attention to our election security, ensuring that this can never happen again, if they continue to deny that it happened at all, then i would say you know what, if there is no other option for us to get access to that information to do our jobs as a coequal branch of government, i would be supportive of an impeachment inquiry. let's go through the sequential process first: that's how we build public support. i don't think we build public support by going from 0 to 60 in a very short amount of time. congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz, it looks beautiful as it often is. >> always. >> thank you so much, appreciate it. thank you. and with that, there's a question. impeachment, who is it good for? impeachment, who is it good for?

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priceline will partner with even more vegas hotels to turn their available rooms into amazing deals. delegates, how do you vote? (wild cheering) (music plays) sample: yes... y-y-y-yes... yes... woman: that is freaky. be right back. with moderate to severe crohn's disease, i was there, just not always where i needed to be. is she alright? i hope so. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn's disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers,

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>> i think the president wants us to impeach him. >> you think he wants us to impeach him? >> he knows it's not a good idea to be impeached. the silver lining for him is he believes he would be kpexonerat by the united states senate. so when we go out there with our case, it has to be ironclad, ironclad. >> joining me now to talk about that, iesha moody mills, fellow at harvard institute, and author of the book branding america. i want to talk about branding in just a minute because a lot of this is about branding. >> here's where i am right now. and i believed that line quite a bit for so many of the other democrats. the vast majority believe there should be impeachment. let's not forget that. at this point, here's how i feel about it, i would prefer that

the democratic leadership in the house focus a little less on what donald trump may or may not want and focus on the state of our democracy right now. this is far more serious than are we playing just the political game back and forth with the president and giving him a spotlight. there's some real devil in the detail we need to get to the bottom of. let's not forget the russians did unequivocally try to hack our elections. >> is that a yes for impeachment or a yes for holding off. >> it's a yes for impeachment proceedings to put this thing out there so that everybody can understand the fact that this president is likely a criminal to have a conversation about it, to start investigating and get deep into it because the democracy, the united states of america is what's at risk at this point. >> david "the washington post" columnist argues this, no matter how bleak things may look for president trump, and right now with record low unemployment and a base of supporters who would drink battery acid if he asked them to things don't look all that bleak, he will always have an ace up his sleeve, the

democrats. there are a lot of nervous democrats out there who worry that they're going to take a winning hand essentially that they think they have and overplay it. how big a concern is that? >> i think it's a major concern. >>right? >> well, think the -- >> impeachment works for him? >> i think the president -- i think nancy pelosi was right in a sense that if the democrats, if the number-one issue that they're always forefront in the media saying is impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, and they let a lot of the things like health care and other issues go by the wayside and the main focal point is impeachment, i think that that ratchets up trump's supporters, his base, his base will go wild and make sure that they will show up and vote and that's the major deal is getting them to the polls and showing up and voting. i think that this rallies his base, and he will use every opportunity to take -- i mean, he's the president, he can do rallies and they're going to. be covered by the media. he can really get his base

whipped into a frenzy if that's all they're going to focus on. the better play for the democrats is to say that we're going to continue a healthy economy, we're going to focus on health care for it everybody, we're going to make sure that you continue to have a good job, but we're going to do it in the way that we like to do it, we're going to focus on other programs, too, like abortion right now, abortion is a hot issue right now. to try -- >> a different front. >> so here's the thing, though, is that all of those issues are 100% important to, i believe, 100% of americans. and they matter. those are not the issues, despite what the democratic leadership messaging is today, those are not exclusively the issues that got nancy pelosi the gavel in the house. 2018 was about resist, resist. the base got riled up. women got riled up because we were looking a president in the face who we knew was morally unfit for this job. and wanted to put in place an accountability metric. >> so, stand by, because jerry

nadler, of course, the chairman of the house judiciary committee, just did a local show on radio on wnyc. here's what he said to sort of answer you just said. >> again, you can't impeach the president until the people support it. and you also -- it's a political act, you also don't want to ditch void t divide the country so the country is bitter for the next 30 years saying we won the election, you stole it. you have to develop, if there is justificatio justification, which i think there certainly is, you have to top t develop the awareness in the country and agreement basically before you can take the real step of an impeachment. >> i think there's two main argume arguments. one is you got to take your time, you got to get the public behind you. the second argument or the second part of that argument is that the democrats are being outmessa outmessaged.

>> first of all, in order to get the public behind you, you actually have to tell the truth and a story and a narrative about what's going on. do you think the general public is reading a 448-page legal memo? probably not. >> no. >> no but if the democrats were to actually have proceedings that laid it out for us in -- >> is it proceedings, though, or something to match what the president does really well, which is to encapsulate things? he says witch hunt so many times that people get it in their heads. he says no collusion. people get that in their heads. his messaging is -- >> spot-on. >> -- what got him where he is today. the trump brand is fantastic. >> yep. >> propaganda -- he's a propaganda master. he's a propaganda. master. that is the truth. >> that's why if the democrats want to win, they're going to have to get a candidate and beat him at the polls. focusing on impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, is almost just the same equivalent as where people were in the republican party were talking about hillary's emails. bernie sanders said it best, that, you know, people don't really give a damn about the ema email, that they really care

about the issues at hand. so i feel like a lot of people, they're going to work every day, they're doing day-to-day routines. they've got jobs. they're really not following, you know, following the details of the mueller report and, you know, the impeachment proceedings and who's been called to -- to testify, who hasn't. these people are doing their day-to-day everything that we're -- we're all on the news so we follow it piece by piece, but the average person probably may want to focus on pocketbook issues and things back to home if they're going to win. >> we'll see. aisha moodie-mills, noelle nikpour, good to both of you. have a good weekend. alexandria ocasio cortez and senator ted cruz, turns out they're actually a match made on twitter. "one more thing" next. uit. with chantix you can keep smoking at first and ease into quitting. chantix reduces the urge so when the day arrives,

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an article about lobbying saying, "it should be illegal to become a corporate lobbyist if you served in congress." about an hour later, a tweet from ted cruz saying, something even he admits is rare, i agree with aoc. "i have long called for a lifetime ban on former members of congress becoming lobbyists. the swamp would hate it, but perhaps a chance for some bipartisan cooperation?" the twitter verse began checking to check if hell had, indeed, frozen over. the two kept going. ocasio-cortez telling cruz, "if you're serious, i'm down, let's make a deal." 20 minutes later the senator said, "game on." the question now, could this be all talk, no walk? time will certainly tell. by looking at the sheer amount of times they've retweeted stories about their unlikely pairing, it does appear cruz and aoc do see eye to eye on this one issue. their common ground has already

led to a number of lawmakers vowing to co-sponsor a bipartisan bill and if reports are true, their staffs have already started talking about drafting legislation. ali velshi. >> i'm telling yoo ining you. >> say it's so. >> i first saw this happening yesterday evening. i was trying to figure out is this a joke, am i being spoofed? >> is this the un -- >> is it the onion? seems to be real. that's bipartisanship. that would be an interesting place for it to start. >> yeah. >> good to see you. >> a few things going on this afternoon. >> we got a few things going on this afternoon. we will pick it up. have a good afternoon. >> thanks, you, too. time for them to finally do what must be done, that was president trump's message for mexico after he threatened to slap tariffs on all mexican imports unless it does more to stop migrants from reaching the united states. administration officials tell nbc news the plan was rushed and there are concerns about the impact on the economy and the u.s./mexico/canada trade agreement. white house press secretary sarah sanders responded to thos